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The Bullshit

walterkirn.substack.com

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Re: The Bullshit

#71

Post by MagicWishMonkey »

mistermann wrote: post #69
MagicWishMonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author doesn't spell it out but he mentions that the idiot story about Hunter Biden's laptop was totally real and not Russia using Giuliani like a stooge and he implies that if you don't think covid was leaked from a lab you're an idiot. So yea, I don't doubt that this guy thinks facebook is being mean by not letting him spread conspiracy bullshit on their platform.

> was totally real I missed that part, any chance you could quote the text where he says this?

> Immerse yourself in news of Russian plots to counterfeit presidential children’s laptops, viruses spawned in Wuhan market stalls, vast secret legions of domestic terrorists flashing one another the OK sign in shadowy parking lots behind Bass Pro Shops experiencing “temporary” inflation, and patriotic tech conglomerates purging the commons of untruths.

Pretty standard alt-right nutjob. Substack is swarming with them.

Re: The Bullshit

#72

Post by jancsika »

> It explains why I thought being conscious of the bullshit actually accomplished something.

For example, leading one to take a vaccine that vastly decreases the risk of dying from a wildly infectious variant of a coronavirus.

Who needs that, right HN!?!

* mock kicks the pavement *

* takes a drag from a cigarette *

* nods my head to Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" *

Re: The Bullshit

#73

Post by epgui »

bilbo0s wrote: post #32
epgui wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No generation in History thus far has demonstrated general possession of this skill.

As is evidenced by writing off the critical thinking skills of others. None of us are terribly good at critical thinking. Now I think about it, that likely particularly applies to those of us who believe we are great at critical thinking.

Some people are adequately humble on some occasions, but statistically speaking you're very correct about whom this applies to.

(Personal side note: This shouldn't mean we throw our hands up in the air in hopelessness, but it should remind us that we all have a mandate to be more critical of our own thinking than of that of others.)

Re: The Bullshit

#74

Post by sellyme »

mistermann wrote: post #70
sellyme wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming it's a satire in response to the following line, which claims that banned Facebook pages are "the anti-bullshit universe": > One option, more popular each day, is to retreat to the anti-bullshit universe of alternative media sources. These are the podcasts, videos, Twitter threads, newsletters, and Facebook pages that regularly vanish from circulation for violating “community standards” and other ineffab…

> I see it all the time in communities I run, people start trying to spin off alternative sites and talk about how impinges on free speech, and then when you check what they were banned for there's a tirade of racial slurs directed at other members of the community. Are you suggesting that this person shares these behaviors?

It depends on what you mean by "these behaviours". I'm suggesting that the author is claiming some great injustice but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves, and in my experience the people doing that usually aren't the world's most upstanding citizens.

I'm certainly not suggesting that the author is prone to outbursts of racial slurs - that was just an example of something I encounter regularly, and typically that type of person is far less literate - but I am extremely doubtful that the content they're complaining about removal of is as "anti-bullshit" as they'd like to claim.

Re: The Bullshit

#75

Post by colordrops »

tomnipotent wrote: post #6

> but it isn’t the news and it hasn’t been for ages. I have a better idea. The news has always been shit. There's this weird fetish with "freedom of the press" that distorts the fact that news is still a business, run by free market forces, with the same distributions of incompetence and corruption as any free market. It used to be the "nightly news", but we now have a 24/7 always-on consumption culture and news orgs…

Absolutely. Time was just as guilty of misinformation, exclusion, blackouts, appeal to vague authorities, and maintaining the Overton window for the establishment. Yeah, sure, it had a much more professional sheen and you had to pay attention to notice, but it was still shit.

Re: The Bullshit

#76

Post by rexreed »

Yes, of course there's bullshit everywhere. But what can you do with that knowledge exactly? Knowing that something is fallacious and full of BS doesn't give you some advantage. It makes it worse. Knowing that the system is full of lies and corrupt doesn't provide a means to get some good from that knowledge or take advantage of knowing the "truth". It's just depressing to know that the takers will always be taking, the fakers will always be faking, and those who know how to work the lies keep winning while those who know the truth of the BS just self-congratulate their own knowledge. Does the BS always win?

Say one knows for a "fact" who killed JFK or the origins of the pandemic, or one knows the actual mechanism by which startups are funded or big deals won (it's never the way it's portrayed to be). What does knowing the truth of any of those facts do other than provide one with some self-satisfaction of knowing? Is it better to live in self-deception and believe the simple lie versus know the hard truth? Does knowing the "actual truth" even provide that self-satisfaction given that the lies and untruths win out so much of the time? Confronting the lies never seems to provide the expected win that those who seem to possess the truth would expect.

Re: The Bullshit

#77

Post by int_19h »

civilized wrote: post #65
dibujante wrote: post #31

Uh-huh, because if something is bullshit then anything that disagrees with it is anti-bullshit. Fauci says masks are bad? That clearly self-serving bullshit entitles you to any reality you want. Don't think Covid is real? Well, some liberal elite once told you a false thing and they also believe Covid is real, so it's the bullshit. You're standing up to the bullshit. They only have to step in their own once to entitl…

Quite a few people seem to think this way, sadly.

Given the choice of examples the author picked to illustrate their argument, it seems likely that they're one of those people.

Re: The Bullshit

#78

Post by rootusrootus »

tomp wrote: post #46
lordnacho wrote: post #3

I feel a bit privileged, and in a dangerous way, because feeling like you're special can be an illusion that is easily shattered. Here's what I mean. If I was born earlier, like say a baby boomer, I'd have less education in critical thinking, but I'd also be more protected by the news media than the time when gen Z grew up. By that I mean most of the stuff in the paper at the time was down the middle, somewhat bland…

> My university educated in laws in the UK are doubting the outcome of elections in the US. Democracy is like science. If you don’t constantly doubt at least a little bit and check the outcome continuously, but instead just trust blindly, you’re doing it wrong.

> If you don’t constantly doubt at least a little bit

Pretty sure we've gone quite a lot farther than a little bit.

Re: The Bullshit

#79

Post by rootusrootus »

rcurry wrote: post #51
OneLeggedCat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's short-sighted, then it is only because that should also be applied to every generation. Most people of every generation in the world still believe in magic, which excuses any need to fully develop critical thinking skills.

Magic?

Religion, no doubt.

Re: The Bullshit

#80

Post by paulpauper »

rexreed wrote: post #76

Yes, of course there's bullshit everywhere. But what can you do with that knowledge exactly? Knowing that something is fallacious and full of BS doesn't give you some advantage. It makes it worse. Knowing that the system is full of lies and corrupt doesn't provide a means to get some good from that knowledge or take advantage of knowing the "truth". It's just depressing to know that the takers will always be taking,…

tune out. it's not like being up to date about everything going on the world is necessary. follow only the news you care about, read only the people whose work you enjoy
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